


The Weight of a Name

by Saraste



Category: Call the Midwife
Genre: Angst and Fluff, F/M, Friendship, Growing Up, Marriage, Mother-Daughter Relationship, Motherhood, Nicknames, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-19
Updated: 2015-12-19
Packaged: 2018-05-07 18:00:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,998
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5465741
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Saraste/pseuds/Saraste
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>...the sound of 'Camilla', dripping with disapproval makes Chummy cringe inside and makes her feel like she is all of eight years old again.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Weight of a Name

**Author's Note:**

  * For [QuantumButterfly](https://archiveofourown.org/users/QuantumButterfly/gifts).



> I do hope you like this. I adore the series and the characters and although Chummy is one of my favorites, I found myself struggling to write her. (Even when I have written in this fandom an itty bitty bit.) But I dipped into the things I liked about her and inspiration struck. So I wrote about Chummy's relationship with her names (given and nickname), gave her a little backstory and went fluffsy over her romance and marriage to Peter. And added some vague little master Fred at the end.
> 
> Happy Holidays! <3 *hug*

Chummy likes her name.

 

And by “her name” she does not mean Camilla, the name that her parents, or rather her mother, bestowed upon her at her birth. “Camilla” feels so very heavy to its bearer, and for the longest time Chummy cannot hear it and not be transported back to her childhood, into hearing her mother's voice, dripping with disapproval with every single letter of it.

 

Sometimes “Camilla” sounds like a dirty word in her mother's mouth.

 

For Chummy was always too ungainly, too tall, too awkward to ever be considered 'proper', least of all by lady Fortescue-Cholmondeley-Browne. Even when Chummy was old enough to know better, to realize that she _was_ important and perfect just as she was, she still flinched at her mother's berating and belittling tone of voice. Having been boarded during her school years had maybe not been the ideal in some ways, as it made all the changes in Chummy all the more noticeable the rare times she and her mother saw each other during the longer summer holiday. All the better to peck at and prod and disapprove all those things in Camilla the girl that had happened during the time spent apart, which had once stretched into two years, which had been among the happiest of Chummy's childhood in her opinion. So the sound of 'Camilla', dripping with disapproval makes Chummy cringe inside and makes her feel like she is all of eight years old again.

 

But Chummy, hearing someone call her that _always_ makes her relax. And remember. For while her school days were in part the reason for some of her worst memories of her mother, the times she spent apart from her really _were_ some of the happiest of Chummy's childhood. In school she was free of the oppressive atmosphere in a home where a mother disapproved, brothers bullied and a father was absent, and had a distant relationship to his wife and children, even the boys.

 

*

 

Her first room-mate was called Elisabet, and despite their similar backgrounds, even Elisabet had found it hard to pronounce Chummy's whole name. (Which was a sore spot for Chummy herself, as that was another subject of scolding to her mother, who always disapproved so.)

 

'Camilla Fortescue-Clhomdley-Browne?' Elisabet ('Call me Elsie, everyone does!') says very carefully and slowly, her mouth deliberate around the tricky and unfamiliar name, all the more difficult to get right when one does not see it in writing, and difficult even then.

 

Chummy, all of eight years old, blushes and looks aside. 'Fortescue-Cholmondeley-Browne .' Her own dictation is as slow as Elsie's, and she almost stutters herself, her mother's harsh words echoing in her mind ('The boys can all do it. Even the _maids_ can do it. Why can you not?')

 

'Forescue-Charmondley-Browne?' Elsie asks hopefully, head cocked, her ginger hair framing her face in two fuzzy, fraying braids.

 

Camilla despairs. Elsie's face suddenly lights up. 'Can I call you Chummy instead?' she asks, hopefully.

 

They are friends for life.

 

By the time Chummy is done with boarding schools, even the teachers call her Chummy. Mater disapproves. Of course.

 

Chummy had actually dreaded going into school a little bit, not helped by all the tales her brothers had told her to scare her, to make the “Scarecrow” tremble, as she had already been 'Frightfully tall, it must be your father's side, _my_ family was always of a normal, respectable height!'. (Mater had been a famed beauty in her youth, and the fact that Chummy did not seem to grow up to fit that role was a sore spot to her mother, Chummy's rather homely appearance was an affront to the great lady.)

 

But school was where she eventually began to flourish, away from her mother's toxic influence; a mother who was so very mindful of the opinions of others, who always cared too much what others thought of her, and who passed that regrettable tendency on to her daughter through cruel words and mocking of her only daughter – and only because she was a little different from the rest.

 

Her brother's were all tall, lanky boys who grew into tall big men. But no-one ever called them too tall. Not even mater. For they were boys. Boys were allowed to be as tall as they pleased. Not girls.

 

Not Camilla the Scarecrow with her broken scabbed knees and her books (books never scorned her nor called her names, books did not care that she was overly tall) and her cowed silence.

 

So, in school Chummy finds herself in her new name and thrives in the easily-given friendship of Elsie's. Elsie is a free, happy girl, named Elisabet for her ginger hair ('Like the Virgin Queen, you know, the one who went against an Armada!') and Elsie by her nanny. She does not flinch when called Elisabet, the same way Cam- no, Chummy now, sometimes does, during that first year. Gradually, people forget to call her Camilla, which is most convenient and suits her just fine.

 

                                                           *

 

Chummy is a name made of friendship, it is rounded and cheery, and slips easily off the tongue. It is a light name without the heavy weight of the name of Chummy's childhood, all the heavier for the sorrow it so often caused its wearer. Her nickname suits Chummy's sunny take on life, which is a part of her that even her mother could not cut out, she often thinks that it might be because she never saw her mother enough as a child for the stomping down to ever really _take_. Bad enough that the times Chummy and her mother were in the same place, her mother had a bad opinion over _every_ single thing that was amiss (not as her mother thought it should be, so, of course, _wrong_ ) in Chummy's life.

 

Her becoming a midwife was certainly one of those things. Her working at Nonnatus House was another. The last straw was Chummy stepping out with a working class man. And it is Lady Fortescue-Cholmondeley-Browne's use of her daughter's Christian name that had made Camilla cowed again and made her cut out her heart. For “Camilla” is not brave. Camilla is still a little girl of eight in that moment before Elsie named her Chummy. Camilla always does what mater tells her to, when mater uses that particular tone, and tells her all the reasons why she shouldn't do something, why something would be unseemly.

 

So Camilla cuts Peter away, and stores the broken pieces of her heart in a corner of her fractured soul, and works, and works, and works.

 

*

 

'But are you all-right, Chummy?' Elsie asks over the phone, the transcontinental call a little crackling, every moment of it precious for fear it might cut off. 'Are you really?'

 

'No, I am not,' Chummy sobs over the phone, wishing fervently that Elsie was there more than as a voice. Yet her fellow midwives, nuns and nurses alike, are a comfort to Chummy, all the more comforting because she has earned their affection. The need to earn things, mostly affection or respect, is a part of her which her mother created in her, and which she does not seem to be able to root out. Yet the affection _is_ sound, despite what Chummy thinks about having needed to earn it.

 

'Ohh, Chummy…' And Elsie comforts her in both words and silence as long as the somewhat bad line holds, “Chummy” being the last word heard. There is a long letter, later. Chummy cries at that too, a bit.

 

Elsie is a good friend.

 

*

 

That episode of her life makes her hate her name so very much it aches. For her mother's use of “Camilla” rots all the happy memories that she has of hearing someone else call her that. And never in a way to make her feel small and like she is wanting of something. To hear “Camilla” being said like that, like Peter had said it, had been a gift, and had begun to chip away at the weight the name had always carried with it. So Chummy locks that away, and steels herself, and is strong. Even when her façade is anything but unnoticeable. Thankfully no-one takes her to task over it, for she could not be able to bear it.

 

*

 

In the end Chummy had learned to never say never, for she had learned to like her Christian name again, and she gets to hear Peter say it again, despite her mother's attempts to ruin her life.

 

Camilla likes her name and the memories that are part of it now, in her adult life.

 

All it had taken was a bike she hadn't quite known how to ride, a busy street, a police constable and an accident. She had been all aflutter, all too long limbs and nerves as she had stammered her apologies. He had been, is, kindly understanding and, which had been most polite, made it that no charges are pressed against her over assaulting a police officer.

 

They had ran into each other in the course of their work, working the same area; Poplar throwing them together at unexpected times and places. They may have needed some help to actually get to their first date, but every step there had been precious to Chummy.

 

She had learned to like her actual name again and it had had everything to do with how Peter says it, has much to do with the love in his tone; every time that he calls her “Camilla” makes the name more easier to bear. Except when his pleading tone when she had told him she could not marry him had made him weep. Yet he had not wept when Chummy had presented herself to him at the police station with almost nothing but a rain coat on her and his name on her lips.

 

He pledges his troth to her by that name 'I take you, Camilla Fortescue-Cholmondeley-Browne, to be my lawfully wedded wife…' as she pledges her love to him in return.

 

For her mother cannot take that name away from her now, not when Peter has it for his own, again, finally, irrevocably.

 

*

 

'Should I start calling you Camilla now?' Elsie asks after they hug, all ginger hair and smiles and petite stature to Camilla's heigh and shorter hair.

 

'I'll always be your Chummy, Elsie,' she gives the only reply there is, really.

 

*

 

They are equal in their marriage, he sees her as she is and never believes that she cannot do something when she sets her sights to it. And so Chummy learns to love Camilla as she learns to lover herself again by his example. It may also have something to do with the fact that he sometimes croons Camilla into her ear when the lights are put out, and there are kisses and things that tend to lead to babies being born.

 

And in due time they are blessed with a baby of their own, whom Chummy vows never to berate for being who he is. She does not want to be the kind of mother her own mater was, the aloof and distant lady Fortescue-Cholmondeley-Browne. Her son's name is imbued with kindness from the very start, for dear old Fred whom little master Fred was named after, has always ever been a friend and supporter.

 

For her son she hopes for a less complicated relationship with one's given name, even if nick names can grow so dear to one as those who gave them. The weight of a name is in how it is used, and so it can wound or elate in equal measure.

 

Chummy will tell her son how friendship can give you a name that you will learn to love, and which does not weigh you down, but also how a loved one can make an old name bloom anew, and make it light again. She is Chummy and Camilla both, now, and she is content.

 

Life is good.


End file.
